Vengeance
Skills ;Avenger Fueled by the desire for r evenge, you gain a vengeance token every time an ally falls. Each token increases the damage you deal and receive. ;Retribution You gain a retribution token when an ally falls. WHen you die, you strike at enemies, dealing damage in a radius that increases with each token. Lore Arwan of Castegaul was a good king, with three good sons. When the famine swept the plains, it was Arwan that opened his granaries to his rivals and their charges, for Arwan was a man of peace. That winter, as the snow piled taller than a ravaging forest bear, Arwan opened the doors of his keep to a group of refugees from the tribe of his rival, the cruel Lord Bolvan. They told a story of conditions across the river, where Bolvan had seized the stores of the village for his own men. Moved by their plight, the good king never thought to doubt the villagers and as the long night fell across Castegaul, a nest of vipers lay coiled at its heart. In truth, the refugees were Bolvan's soldiers and they had infiltrated Arwan's castle to assassinate the Castegaul king and his entire line! As the night ebbed into morning, the assassins made their move. Each of Arwan's sons was slain quietly and all seemed to work towards their plan, but as they crept up on Arwan himself, they found not a sleeping old man, but a wakeful and prepared king. He had heard them cross his room, seen their shadows cast by the dying fire and he was ready, the sword of Castegaul in his hand. When it was done, Arwan had the bodies burned and tended to his sons. He buried each in a tomb of gleaming marble, brought from the quarry lands to the south. As each was interred, he removed their iron crowns and placed them on his belt. When all three crowns had been removed and his sons lay resting upon their stone biers, Arwan came to his castle's forge. In one hand, he held the crowns of his sons, in the other, the sword of Castegaul. He trust the blade into the forge fire and hammered each crown flat to be heated after it. Throughout the night, the grieving king hammered the metal of his sons' crowns into the blade of the sword of Castegaul. With each blow of the hammer, the king's remembered another moment in his sons' lives and even the fire of the forge paled in comparison to the strength of the old king's rage. His kingdom meant nothing to him, then. He was no emperor, no king of a great land; he was simply a father, bereft of his children at the hands of his enemies. Bolvan would pay, by the gods, even if the price be Arwan's kingdom itself. And with that thought, the king took the golden crown from his brow and hammered it into the cross guard of the blade, for he would sit no throne until vengeance was his and Bolvan lay dead at his feet. Still hot from the fire, the king quenched the blade in the snow and stalked out of the city gates, the steaming blade and his winter furs his only possessions. When Arwan was seen next, it was at the gates of Bolvan's Keep, drenched in the blood, the last remnant of Bolvan's men who had tried to stop him. The sword of Castegaul seemed to scream in a primal joy, the air around the blade shimmering as if in a desert heat; the king's rage had transformed the blade and it was now a sword of Vengeance, a sword of anger! Arrow after arrow, the work of archers on the keep walls, rained down on Arwan, but he would not be stopped. As his very life's blood poured from every wound he staggered toward Bolvan, a skull's grin across his bloody face. Cruel Bolvan ran Arwan through, but still the old king came at him, impaling himself on his rival's blade. Closer and closer still the old king came, now more animated corpse than man and when at last he reached Bolvan, he placed his hands around Bolvan's neck and squeezed. Dropped at his feet, forgotten was the sword of Castegaul, hissing and sputtering, the king's blood boiling on the blade as if it had just been pulled from the forge. Bolvan, trapped by the dying king and his own blade could only look on terror, his eyes wide, as the sword ignited Arwan's winter furs. The fire burned the two kings, aye, but it took with them Bolvan's entire keep! Not a timber of Bolvan wood stands on the Castegaul plains to this day and as for the blade? It disappeared from the land, but legends speak of a blade in the battles above that seethes with rage at the death of comrades, a blade that burns now, as hot as the day it was pulled from the forge... Category:Weapons